Great observation! The maltreatment-offending relationship has long been documented, as is the notion of increased traumatic exposure among youth involved in the juvenile justice system, who are 13 times less likely to report no traumatic exposures and four times more likely to report exposure to four or more types of trauma. Even more, policy-relevant is the increased exposure among youth penetrating deeper into the justice system, such as those placed in residential facilities. While some scholars focus on exposure to specific traumatic events such as child physical abuse or neglect, an approach that has recently grown in popularity is the focus on an accumulation of traumatic events. The most commonly used paradigm is the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), a set of early childhood events that were initially identified by Felitti and his colleagues (1998). While the first ACE conceptualization included seven traumatic experiences, a later iteration expanded it to 10, namely emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, physical neglect, violent treatment toward mother, household substance abuse, household mental illness, parental separation/divorce, and having a household member with a history of incarceration Initial public health studies utilized retrospective data and found those with a higher ACE exposure were more likely to experience negative health outcomes later in life, such as cancer, lung disease, and early morbidity relative to those with fewer traumatic exposures. Research from other disciplines has expanded the known consequences of ACEs to include risky sexual behavior, higher rates of unemployment, serious juvenile offending, and life-course offending among others.
You could try more reading with the below research:
Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., & Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258.
